Context is a critical variable in extinction learning. Yet its poorly understood what exactly constitutes a context and why extinction is so sensitive to it. By testing pigeons in a novel arena-setup we will establish if context is a physical or a learned stimulus property. We will further use optogenetic stimulation to probe the causality in the underlying neural network. Using modern, wireless, neurophysiology in crows we will also test if mechanisms of attention or of generalization can account for the difference in context-sensitivity between acquisition and extinction.

Guiding questions of A19:

• Is context defined only by contingency and continuity or are some physical properties more likely to become a context? Can we further identify causality in the underlying neural network using optogenetic manipulation?
• Is the avian hippocampus involved in context-dependency of extinction learning?
• Is the difference in context-dependency between acquisition and extinction a difference in attention or in generalization?
• Are individual differences in extinction-renewal driven by reinforcement history alone or are rules and strategies involved? Are such results stable across species?